80s

20 years ago today, Mike Oldfield released a concept album based on a sci-fi novel by Arthur C. Clarke, one which the author not only approved of but, indeed, enjoyed enough to compose a few words for the liner notes.

The idea of Oldfield taking a shot at composing an album based on The Songs of Distant Earth came via Rob Dickins, the chairman of Warner Brothers at the time, but it seems unlikely that the suggestion was one offered completely out of the blue: Oldfield’s Warner Brothers debut, 1992’s Tubular Bells II, had featured two tracks which seemingly had ties to Clarke’s work. (“Sentinel” was the name of the short story which ultimately evolved into 2001: A Space Odyssey, while “Sunjammer” was reportedly the original title of the short story “The Wind from the Sun.”)

25 years ago today, the singer from New Order, the guitarist from the Smiths, and a Pet Shop Boy got together to deliver one of the last great singles of the ‘80s, even if most Americans didn’t get a chance to hear it until 1990.

Picture it: the UK music scene in 1989. Johnny Marr is two years out of the Smiths and enjoying the opportunity to play with a variety of different artists, including Bryan Ferry, the Pretenders, Talking Heads, and The The; New Order has milked three singles out of their latest album, Technique, putting Bernard Sumner in a position to contemplate doing a solo album; and the Pet Shop Boys are post-Introspective but pre-Behavior, thereby giving Neil Tennant a bit of downtime. When Sumner realized that you tend to be rather solo when working on a solo album, he decided to call Marr – who he’d first met in 1984 during a Quando Quango session – and ask if he’d up for helping him put something together. As to Neil Tennant’s involvement, it’s been said that he found his way in after Factory Records artist Mark Farrow told him about the collaboration between Sumner and Marr and found it intriguing enough to reach out to them about chiming in.

31 years ago today, Duran Duran earned their first – and, as of this writing, their only – #1 album in the UK with Seven and the Ragged Tiger, which would prove to be the last full-length studio outing for the so-called “Fab Five” lineup of the band for 21 years.

The process of putting together the follow-up to Rio initially kicked off in France, where Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, Roger Taylor, and Andy Taylor began writing songs and knocking out a few demos with producer Ian Little, but the proper recording process began when the band headed to Montserrat. Ensconced in George Martin’s Air Studios, Duran Duran and Little joined up with Alex Sadkin, working together for more than a month before heading back to the UK for a charity performance attended by Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Post-concert, the band worked a bit more on the album in London, returned to Montserrat for another session, then headed to Sydney, Australia to finish things up. (That’s also where they filmed the video for the album’s first single, “Union of the Snake.”)

Some merchants would have you believe that it was acceptable to start playing holiday music ages ago – like, say, when your kids were still trying to shop for their Halloween costumes – but most people are likely to roll their eyes at you if you break out Michael Bublé’s Christmas at any point prior to the last week of November. Actually, they might still roll their eyes at you, what with these kids today, but that’s neither here nor there, especially when we’ve given this piece a subject line that’s currently making you want to scream, “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE $1,000 VISA GIFT CARD?!?”

Who wants to take home a framed imited-edition (of just 100!) original artwork print by Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart AND a copy of Captain Beefheart - SUN ZOOM SPARK: 1970 to 1972 - a limited-edition 4-CD box set featuring newly remastered studio albums and a disc of previously unreleased outtakes and rarities? You do! Enter below.

When Joni Mitchell hit the big 7-1 back on November 7, we put together a playlist in celebration of the famed Canadian singer-songwriter, talked a bit about her life and times and general awesomeness, and oh so casually mentioned how we were only a few short weeks away from the release of a new four-disc box set bearing “about as Mitchell-esque a title as you could hope for.” Well, the wait is over: Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting to be Danced is now in stores…and, c’mon, were we right about that title, or were we right?

As our press release for the collection revealed, the collection was first conceived as the music to a ballet about love, but after spending 18 months trying to distill everything she’d written about love—and the lack of it—down to a single disc, Mitchell opted to abandon the ballet. “I wanted the music to feel like a total work—a new work,” she explains in the liner notes to the set. “No matter what I did, though, at that length, it remained merely a collection of songs.”

It’s only been a few short weeks since we introduced Emmylou Harris’s 70’s Studio Album Collection and 80’s Studio Album Collection to our digital catalog, but now it’s time to bring something from Ms. Harris’s catalog to CD…or, more specifically, to bring it back to CD.

In 2007, we put out a pretty cool Emmylou Harris box set entitled Songbird: Rare Tracks & Forgotten Gems, one which featured 78 tracks, all hand-chosen by the singer-songwriter herself. At the time of its initial release, Emmylou said of its contents, "I've selected not greatest hits but personal favorites that – with a few exceptions – have never appeared on any other compilations, but were important gems in the string of pearls that each album strives to become.” In addition, the set also included a handful of contributions she’d made to different tribute albums, various and sundry live and demo tracks, and a few collaborations.

It’s vinyl reissue time again, and this week’s offering is generally considered to be the third album by The Specials, although it’s technically credited to The Special AKA. Why the change in name? Well, you know how it goes with bands: memberships change over time, and sometimes enough members depart to make it seem a little dodgy to keep the band’s name the same.

In the case of In the Studio, which emerged almost half a decade after the previous Specials album (More Specials, released in 1980), there was good reason to view the group as an untested entity, given that Terry Hall, Lynval Golding, and Neville Staple had all headed off for the poppier pastures of Fun Boy Three, leaving Jerry Dammers as the predominant creative force. Not that he hadn’t already been writing songs, but there was definitely a major shift in the material with the aforementioned trio having departed the ranks, particularly in the political content.

30 years ago today, The Smiths released a compilation which provided the band with their second top-10 album in the UK while providing their American fans with an item to hold up to fellow Anglophiles as proof of their devotion to Messrs. Morrissey and Marr. (It seems like a lifetime ago now, but there really was a time when the words “it’s an import” could get a gasp out of your real music obsessives.)

Emerging on the heels of the band’s self-titled debut, which had emerged earlier in 1984 and climbed all the way to the penultimate spot on the UK album charts, Hatful of Hollow was a stopgap measure suggested by Morrissey to make sure as many people as possible heard their new single, “How Soon Is Now?” By happy coincidence, however, it also kept The Smiths flying high in the public eye while the quartet worked on their sophomore studio effort, and – better yet – it proved to be a commercial success as well. Not as much of one of as their debut, mind you, but making it to #7 is still pretty swell as chart placements go. Plus, it provided the band with the opportunity to formally release versions of some of the tracks from The Smiths that they felt better served the material, so it was both a commercial and a creative victory.

29 years ago today, music fans in America were provided with the opportunity to find out what all the fuss was about with a certain synth-based band from Basildon.

Depeche Mode might’ve been formed in 1980 and released their first single (“Dreaming of Me”) and album (Speak & Spell) in 1981, but despite taking the British charts by storm virtually from the get-go, it wasn’t until the release of their 1984 single, “People are People,” that Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, Andy Fletcher, and Alan Wilder managed to start finding a foothold in America.

That’s right: poor old Vince Clarke would have to wait until joining forces with Andy Bell to form Erasure before he’d see his way into any US charts success.